[Tweeters] Savannah sparrows in winter?

[Kim Thorburn via Tweeters]

Western Washington, yes. I was quite surprised, though, by a couple of Savannah Sparrows (mixed in with a few American Tree Sparrows) on a cold, foggy day last week on the northern end of the Douglas Plateau . The habitat was right. Maybe distracted by the mild fall weather.


Kim



Kim Marie Thorburn, MD, MPH

Spokane, WA

(509) 465-3025 home

(509) 599-6721 cell



________________________________
From: Tweeters <tweeters-bounces at mailman11.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Dennis Paulson via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2025 2:18 PM
To: Julia H <azureye at gmail.com>
Cc: TWEETERS tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Savannah sparrows in winter?

Julia, small numbers of Savannah Sparrows winter widely in western Washington (like the alliteration?), all the way north into southwestern BC. I would expect them only in wide-open grassy areas, but if those are present, there could be Savannahs there.

Dennis Paulson
Seattle

On Nov 26, 2025, at 2:02 PM, Julia H via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu<mailto:tweeters at u.washington.edu>> wrote:

I was surprised to see an ebird checklist for a local (Seattle) park that included savannah sparrow.

In my experience I never see savannah sparrows in Seattle in winter, which would seem to make sense based on their feeding patterns (I'm not sure how they'd survive winter!), and this range map from Cornell seems to agree: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Savannah_Sparrow/maps-range

But when I look at the range map for savannah sparrow based on ebird-reported observations, one gets the impression that there's quite a lot of savannah sparrows in western Washington in winter: https://ebird.org/map/savspa?neg=true&env.minX=-168.66954078670645&env.minY=25.321713084349895&env.maxX=-67.77110328670646&env.maxY=66.86001568245365&zh=true&gp=false&ev=Z&excludeExX=false&excludeExAll=false&mr=12-2&bmo=12&emo=2&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2025

Should I be looking harder for this sparrow in winter?  Or is that aggregated data just likely a lot of rather mistaken birders?

Thanks,

Julia
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